


Christmas Elf Revisited

by faintingviolet



Series: Buddiemas 2020 Prompts [6]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Buddiemas (9-1-1 TV), Christmas Elf, Date Night, Established Relationship, Fluff, Free day, Idiots in Love, M/M, POV Evan "Buck" Buckley, Reminiscing, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faintingviolet/pseuds/faintingviolet
Summary: Buck didn’t often think about the Christmas Elf who had mistaken he and Eddie as a couple three years ago. Sure, her kind smile and heartfelt compliment would come back to him from time to time as he was working through his feelings for Eddie, wondering if this relationship they were in now would ever come to be. He had taken some small reassurance in someone who didn’t know either of them thinking that they were together; that they were a couple, a family. It had helped make it feel possible.(December 16 - Free Day)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Buddiemas 2020 Prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057301
Comments: 3
Kudos: 110
Collections: Buddiemas 2020





	Christmas Elf Revisited

Buck didn’t often think about the Christmas Elf who had mistaken he and Eddie as a couple three years ago. Sure, her kind smile and heartfelt compliment would come back to him from time to time as he was working through his feelings for Eddie, wondering if this relationship they were in now would ever come to be. He had taken some small reassurance in someone who didn’t know either of them thinking that they were together; that they were a couple, a family. It had helped make it feel possible.

Now he sometimes looked at Christopher and heard her words echo in his mind, “ _You two have an adorable son._ ”, and thought back to how easy it had been at the end to say, “ _Thank You”_ and leave it at that. Because Chris had always felt a little his, long before he felt comfortable feeling that way. That he was now able to be such a large part of Chris’s life, and Chris such an enormous part of his, had seemed an impossibility, but he had subconsciously worked in the direction of it.

Part of him knew the wanting had begun in earnest before that night at the fountain, but it was something he actively had to deal with starting then. His decision had been to push it down because Eddie was trying to make things work with Shannon, and there wasn’t a place for his possible feelings. He was happy with being Eddie’s best friend and it had been easy to decide that was enough for him. Buck had pursued Ali and it had all been fine. Until it wasn’t.

The Truck Explosion. The Tsunami. The Lawsuit. It had been an awful six months, the last month of it the worst of all because he almost lost Eddie and Christopher, two people who had become irreplaceable to him.

But then he didn’t. They patched it up. He got to come home to the 118, and home to the Diaz boys. Their friendship put back in place, finally truly getting back to normal at Christmas at the station with their entire 118 extended family. There had been a good six months after that, six months of normality, six months where those feelings for Eddie started to bubble up again. He couldn’t look at it too hard or too closely or he’d have to admit how deep the feelings really were. That would be dangerous because it could upset the delicate balance they had rebuilt. It was bad enough that there had been a couple of awkward moments along the way.

Then Eddie ended up under 40 feet of dirt and Buck thought he’d lost his best friend, and he finally admitted to himself if no one else, the man he loved. Eddie made it through, rescued himself before the rest of the 118 could figure out how to do it. Later, Eddie had looked Buck in the eye and intoned _I’m always going to fight to come home to my family_ and for the first time Buck let himself believe that Eddie meant **him** , too. It had settled some of the uneasy feeling that had been living under his skin since Eddie cut his line.

It had still taken a few more months for them to get out of their own way, to acknowledge what had been growing steadily between them since Eddie had shown up that first day. Buck still blushed when he thought about the morning the dam broke inside him and he pushed Eddie up against the cabinets in the man’s own kitchen and waited the half second for Eddie to close the distance between them and the intensity of that first kiss and how much it felt like it had always been something they had done. Like a few months later when they said _I love you_ for the first time.

“Everything okay, Buck?”

“Hm?”

“You just squeezed my hand, everything okay?”

Buck looked down at their entwined fingers. They were walking around that same fountain on date night, headed off to dinner and some last-minute shopping for Christopher. And everything was perfect.

“Yeah, I was just thinking. Did I ever tell you about the elf who thought we were a couple when we brought Christopher to take his picture with Santa that first Christmas?”

“Yes, only a couple dozen times.” Eddie smiled at him, that small indulgent smile that was just for him, and leaned in to kiss his boyfriend.

Buck hoped that if that Elf was working here again this year that she saw them and smiled at how happy they were. She had been right, if just a little bit early.


End file.
